Title: Wither (Chemical Gardens 1)Author: Lauren DeStefano Publishers:Simon & Schuster Books for Young ReadersPublication Date: 3-22-11Goodreads Synopsis: "By age sixteen, Rhine Ellery has four years left to live. She can thank modern science for this genetic time bomb. A botched effort to create a perfect race has left all males with a lifespan of 25 years, and females with a lifespan of 20 years. Geneticists are seeking a miracle antidote to restore the human race, desperate orphans crowd the population, crime and poverty have skyrocketed, and young girls are being kidnapped and sold as polygamous brides to bear more children.

When Rhine is kidnapped and sold as a bride, she vows to do all she can to escape. Her husband, Linden, is hopelessly in love with her, and Rhine can't bring herself to hate him as much as she'd like to. He opens her to a magical world of wealth and illusion she never thought existed, and it almost makes it possible to ignore the clock ticking away her short life. But Rhine quickly learns that not everything in her new husband's strange world is what it seems. Her father-in-law, an eccentric doctor bent on finding the antidote, is hoarding corpses in the basement. Her fellow sister wives are to be trusted one day and feared the next, and Rhine is desperate to communicate to her twin brother that she is safe and alive. Will Rhine be able to escape--before her time runs out?

Together with one of Linden's servants, Gabriel, Rhine attempts to escape just before her seventeenth birthday. But in a world that continues to spiral into anarchy, is there any hope for freedom?"

My Review: This story is different in a good way. I wasn't sure how I like it at first then it got really good. Yes this was creepy in ways but I loved this book so much. It got better as it went along and I couldn't stop reading this book. I didn't like how it was slow but it picked up as I went along. I really didn't think it was necessary for Ceily to have a baby after all she was only 13!!!! Thats all she could talk about I personally didn't like her at all. I will talk more about her later in the review. Anyways besides that it was a really good read and I loved it.

So the plot in away is very different like I said before. At the age of 20 and 25 people die because of a virus that was caused by the perfection of the human race. We don't find out much about the virus but maybe we will as we go along with the series. I don't know. Right off the bat you have an action scene that grabbed my attention but after the taking of the girls for sister wives and the mass murdering of girls they rushed into things slowly with the wedding. The main character Rhine doesn't like it there and she is trying to escape this situation. I wouldn't blame her at all. It would seem awful to be here. It was little easy to predict that Rhine would escape that and she would end up with Gabriel the help typical stuff. I think the reason it was so slow is this book had so much of a complex world that need to be built. But now that we know everything hopefully things will be really good in the next book. We don't know much about Gabriel or Rhine's twin brother, Rowan. Maybe we will in the next book I don't know."

Rhine was an okay main character she wasn't the best I have read about but I liked her. She wasn't the annoying type like Ceily and she wasn't bitter either. She wouldn't stop trying to get back to her brother. Gabriel we don't know much about but I liked him he was trying to protect Rhine the whole time without getting killed. Linden I felt so bad for him when Rhine ran way. Linden is this story's Maxon they are both so sweet and kind. I didn't like Linden's dad he was like Maxon's dad but like worse in so many ways. Ceily one of the other characters that I hate. She is a little nosy 13 year old kid who is the worse character every I hated her so much. She needed to mind her own business. Oh Mr.Sir Rhine and Gabriel are seeing each other. That is one of the many situations that happened here.

Overall this was really good book. I should have wrote this review sooner so things would be clearer in my head.